Saturday, December 12, 2015

The LIS "Minstrel" Show

(AKA The post in which I never cursed, although I
really wanted to)

“The irony here is that while diversity is desirable
on paper, it is often resisted in practice. This marginality and irony were not
noticed or appreciated by the institution that thought hiring an African
American female was enough to fulfill any larger organizational diversity
goals. The care and retention of such a hire did not appear to be of consideration
or concern.” Nicole Cooke (Full citation: Cooke, N. A. (2014, May). Pushing
back from the table. Polymath: An Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Journal.
Retrieved from https://ojcs.siue.edu/ojs/index.php/polymath/index.)

Libraries have gotten really good at diversity talk.
Spurred on by this diversity talk in libraries and ALA, LIS education has finally gotten
better at diversity talk as well. But, in both practice and education, almost
everything I’ve seen isn’t really diversity. It’s talk. LIS* doesn’t seem to
really want practitioners, educators, and students from diverse backgrounds.
What LIS wants is a shiny, happy diversity that can’t exist in this world where
so many forms of oppression continue to inform the lived experiences of so many
people. LIS wants the PR photos for the websites and brochures, but not the
reality in the stacks, offices, and classrooms. LIS seems to want people of
color who aren’t ever allowed to be angry or even firmly state their opinions,
immigrants (documented, of course) who want to slam the door behind them (while
instantly becoming fluent English speakers), and Native peoples who have gotten
“over” the genocide of the indigenous tribes in this (their) land.

All too often, when LIS does recognize various forms
of oppression, it does so through a historical lens. Yes, indeed, things were
bad for [insert group here]. We’re so glad things are better now!

Of course, now that we have an official designated
month for almost every group, it’s become even easier for LIS to tokenize
oppressed groups. We should just be thankful we have our specific month and
stop talking so much. (Oh, while you’re here, would you mind chairing the steering
committee for our new diversity action taskforce and mentoring these Spectrum
Scholars?)

I have lost count of the times I have heard students
and colleagues from oppressed groups described as “too sensitive,” or “angry,” or “having a
chip on their shoulders,” or “dismissive.” These comments are all types of
microaggressions, and LIS is a
microaggression minefield. When you make an offhand comment about being
surprised at how “professional” (or "articulate") my Black colleague and friend was (after she
walks away), be prepared for me to ask you exactly what you meant. And you can
believe that my comment about you to her later is going to be a lot less
professional.

During my doctoral program, I had the great fortune
of having a Black, retired school librarian in my cohort. Barbara and I became
great friends through our coursework (capped by a seminar in Critical Race
Theory (CRT) in Education seminar) and would often guest lecture in each
other’s classes. As a Black woman teaching mostly White undergraduates, Barbara
got no shortage of grief in her student evaluations, from “angry Black woman" comments to focusing “too much” on race. She and I eventually worked out a
system where, before she ever broached the “diversity” subject, I came into her
children’s literature courses and did a guest lecture about my research, the
lack of diversity in youth literature, and an overview of CRT. In the course of
that one lecture, I spent far more time talking about racism, oppression, and
Whiteness than Barbara ever had in an entire course. But, because a White woman
was the one doing the talking and bringing up the “r” word, it was no longer a
problem for the students. It worked so well that Barbara and I were both
appalled. (Honestly, I was far more appalled than Barbara, who was more
sympathetically appalled in recognition of how surprised I was by the depths of
racism and White privilege.)

I know that my Whiteness often gives me more freedom
to talk about a lot of these issues than many of my colleagues have,
particularly with other Whites. While I don’t have complete freedom (I’m
apparently a “radical” and a SJW, which I had to Google), I can choose how I
use my privilege. Sometimes that means really difficult conversations with
White colleagues, practitioners, and students. It means not letting people get
away with racist, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, or microaggressive
comments in my presence. Are there days when I don’t want to deal with it?
Sure. Are there times when I know I should have said something and didn’t? You
bet there are. I still make mistakes on this journey, but I believe I have a
responsibility to make what difference I can.

I really hope that one day we as a society (or at
least a discipline/profession) get to the point where I can stop doing this. (I
mean people even say these things when they know what I teach and research!)
Yet, again this semester, I had students in my multicultural course who chose
to give more import to one of the few White writers we read than that they did
to the plethora of African American, Asian American, Latinx, Native American,
and bi/multiracial writers we also read. If, for whatever twisted reason, White
people will listen to what other White people say while giving less importance
to the voices of people of color and Native peoples, then we White people need
to start making sure that we’re saying the right things.

So I’m saying: White people in LIS, if you really
want diversity, inclusion, and equity, that means you have to acknowledge that
racism is endemic in American society. Since LIS is a part of American society,
racism is endemic in LIS. Talking about race and racism is hard, but we need to
be doing more of it. And we all need to be doing it. Not just that special
committee, task force, or action team you created. Every single one of us.

But before we even get to that point, we need to do
something even more crucial. White LIS people, we need to listen. The African
American, Asian American, Latinx, Native American, and bi/multiracial
faculty, practitioners, and students (who haven’t already fled to other
disciplines and professions after giving up on us) are already talking. They
have never stopped talking. But we, White LIS people in general, have never
really listened. We listened here and we listened there, over the course of time,
but we never really listened. We only want happy talk, that “man, we used to
have it rough, but those days are long gone” talk. Because, when people of
color and Native peoples in our professional world start talking about
contemporary oppression (even inside the library/library school/archives), we
get defensive. Or offended. Or get our hackles up and shut down.

Even among
those of us who consider ourselves “allies,” there is still too much of a
tendency to tell people of color and Native peoples how to feel or act or
respond. Sometimes, we “allies” make things worse than other Whites, by
confusing the issues and making situations more complicated for our colleagues
and students. We, too, need to really listen.

If you are ready to listen, I would recommend that you join one of the
organizations below and get involved with the intention of listening (not
telling):

* Used to indicate overarching
structures/habits/practices throughout LIS practice and education, while
recognizing that there are (thankfully) individuals and institutions to whom
this post does not apply.

4 comments:

In 2000, I finished my PhD in Education from a Research I school. As the only Native person in the department and the entire college at that time, I was a lone voice and received support from some, but for the most part, the experience was unpleasant.

In 2014 I finished my MLIS through San Jose State, as part of a cohort of Native people who regularly sought each other out for support. Going through the degree/classes together was a sharp and important contrast to my previous experience. The content of most of our readings were--not surprisingly--incredibly white. The institutionalized racism is very much part of what students in MLIS programs get.

I'm pleased as can be with your writings on here and hope they're being read widely--and assigned, too--in MLIS courses.

Thank you Robin--this is great. IMO--LIS and education in general are almost completely White-supremacist. I believe we construct knowledge. If the information we used is tainted by the lens of White-supremacy capitalist patriarchy--then the knowledge we construct from that information will be tainted with White-supremacist tendencies and un-examined axioms. LIS and education itself is almost completely uncritical of this. The legacies of colonialism are part of the pillars of our educational system. So many of the POC I meet in LIS and education are submissive to the system because they have bought into the system. While other, more radical thinkers publish dissertations and books that nobody reads for whatever reasons. We need to be proactive and also respond to backlashes in ways that are not reflections of victimization, but of empowerment, of voice and agency. Thank you for your work my friend!

It especially bothers me that, as a profession, we generally ignore the emotional labor that constantly being placed in positions where one is expected to "teach" his/her (even receptive, well-intended) colleagues must have on librarians of color. White librarians have a responsibility to educate ourselves about systems of oppression and subjugation, not simply rely on our colleagues of color to do so when we feel so inclined. If white librarians sometimes "don't want to deal with it," imagine how someone who constantly "has to deal with it" every.single.day must feel.

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Transforming American Libraries

Grounded in critical theory, this blog presents the public scholarship and writings of Robin Kurz (and guest bloggers) on the ways in which library staff, scholars, educators, and students can interrogate current practices to transform American libraries into equitable spaces (physical and virtual). Topics will range in/across race, gender, class, sexual orientation, ability, and other forms of identity with overlap into/through media, education, publishing, culture, etc. This blog has no affiliation with any organization, institution, or agency. Opinions expressed in each post are solely those of that post’s author. Comments are moderated.